Why are people afraid of spiders?

Question

I am, and I dont know why! I would like to know though. I know lots about them, and I am afraid even though I know they are helping me!

Answer 1

I am probably THE WORLDS WORST when its comes to being scared of them!! I have been known to be just laying in the bed and say a strand of my hair brushes across my arm I will freak and jump up and literally flip the bed thinking it was a spider!! lol. There was a dead spider in the bathroom floor a couple weeks ago. I started screaming and I wouldnt even go into the bathroom until my boyfriend got it. First he smashed it with his shoe and said "Shut up its already dead gosh" and I said "ahhhh I dont care get it out of here" well he kinda just brushed it aside and it kinda blended in with the carpet then and knowing it was dead all smushed up in a ball I totally went bollistic until he found it and picked it up! And I mean EVERY bit of it!! No leg or any part of it was to be left on the floor. And still to this day I sidestep around the area where the spider was when I go into the bathroom! I am so freaked out by them. I have been to the doctor about my phobia. I seem to have it pretty bad!! Nothing much you can do.

Answer 2

I have been scarred of them sense I was a little girl. My mother did not keep a proper house, and her house was covered in these black spiders, I am not sure what kind they were, but I hated going in the house or going to sleep at night because I was afraid I would get bitten. Till this day I am terrified of them. I still dream of them covering the house.

Answer 3

I can say as a person who is deathly afraid of spiders (and centipedes and millipedes), that it's because they have an unnatural number of legs. They move fast and can fit into really small spaces so you're never sure of where they're hiding. So an invasion of personal space probably is at the root of it. That and they could be poison, and perhaps also, I'm a little bit insane.

Answer 4

It can be communicated to you. I still don't like spiders, and would totally panic around black widows....the reason is because my mother was afraid of them and communicated it to me.

So when I was first married, I was terrified of every spider and found myself living in a place where spiders came in from everywhere.
Then one day I found a huge tarantulla on my screen door and I was scared to leave it there, in case it got in the house, and scared to get near enough to kill it....I was concerned about saving it! I finally did kill it with a broom....and no, I never worried about the world losing one huge spider!

But maybe the fear lessons with exposure, because even though I still don't like them, I'm not as frightened of them like I used to be. So maybe you got your fright from someone close to you when you were a child....or from a scary experience you had with one.

Answer 5

I just don't like bugs in general . But spiders can bite , especially the brown recluse , and cause serious bodily harm.
I know 2 people that had spider bites and both had very serious infections, sending them to the hospital and doctors numerous times.

Answer 6

I just think that anything with that many legs is creepy. But I'm less afraid than my son (a 2nd degree black belt) and my husband (a Vietnam war veteran)....so explain that!

Oh, and just when you think you are getting over the phobia...I heard/read that most people swallow a spider or two while they sleep at some point during their lives....made it hard for me to sleep for a while, yuck.

Answer 7

First of all, they look completely unnatural. Where else in the animal kingdom are you going to find a creature with EIGHT eyes and NO HEAD???
Spiders don't kill first and then eat their prey like other animals; the just stun them and suck their guts out all while they're still alive.
The posture of is very unnerving. Other insects scatter about in what looks like a regular walking stride, rather upright considering how horizontal they are, but spiders look like they're always slouching, lurking...

Creepy buggers, spiders are. >:D

Answer 8

I think its because of the legs, all eight tickly crawly legs and the teeth. I heard that this one girl went to sleep and woke up with a spider web in her ear and the spider was living in her ear! Isn't that gross? That's one motivation to be afraid of spiders.

Answer 9

Because they are creepy crawly things that suck the fluids out of it's dinner. Knowing that is enough to creep me out.

Did you know that the Daddy Long Legs is the most poisonous spider in the world!

Answer 10

Maybe because they move faster then us. Have more then two legs. And some do bite. And the fact that we swallow at least one almost everynight as we sleep bothers some people too. I know to see a slow moving insect or even on me? It does not bother me as much as would a fast moving insect.
Take care.